An Essay on the Origin of Ideas

Christopher Gauker

Words and Images

An Essay on the Origin of Ideas

Christopher Gauker

Description

At least since Locke, philosophers and psychologists have usually held that concepts arise out of sensory perceptions, thoughts are built from concepts, and language enables speakers to convey their thoughts to hearers. Christopher Gauker holds that this tradition is mistaken about both concepts and language. The mind cannot abstract the building blocks of thoughts from perceptual representations. More generally, we have no account of the origin of concepts that grants them the requisite independence from language. Gauker's alternative is to show that much of cognition consists in thinking by means of mental imagery, without the help of concepts, and that language is a tool by which interlocutors coordinate their actions in pursuit of shared goals. Imagistic cognition supports the acquisition and use of this tool, and when the use of this tool is internalized, it becomes the very medium of conceptual thought.

Words and Images

An Essay on the Origin of Ideas

Christopher Gauker

Table of Contents

PrefaceIntroduction: Defining the Question1. The Lockean Theory2. The Kantian Theory3. Regions of Similarity Space4. The Sellarsian Theory5. Imagistic Cognition6. Similarity without Concepts7. Cooperation by Means of Words8. Thinking in LanguageReferencesIndex

Words and Images

An Essay on the Origin of Ideas

Christopher Gauker

Author Information

Christopher Gauker is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. He works in both the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind. His prior books include Words without Meaning (2003) and Conditionals in Context (2005).

Words and Images

An Essay on the Origin of Ideas

Christopher Gauker

Reviews and Awards

"Christopher Gauker's new book is a rich and innovative study of the nature of conceptual thought, its relation to language, the relation between concepts and perception, and the place of imagistic thinking in cognition."--Edouard Machery, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

"Gauker has written a rich and thought-provoking book deserving of careful study. I fully agree with him that philosophers of mind have tended to underestimate or even to overlook the powers of nonconceptual, imagistic cognition. The investigation of imaginative and perception-based forms of reasoning contained in Words and Images is a valuable step in the right direction." -- Mind

"[Gauker's] new book offers a mind-boggling effort to overthrow many philosophical orthodoxies and received wisdoms. ... [it] is also noteworthy for the broad scope of problems covered ... It is a book definitely worth reading." -- Organon F